February 28, 2004

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  Scientists say an instant is now shorter

  
  

  Researchers in Austria and Germany measured the smallest time interval recorded, and found it lasted a ten million billionth of a second.

  
  

  It's about ten times shorter than the previous shortest measured interval, which lasted about one femtosecond or a million billionth of a second.

  
  

  The scientists used pulses of laser light to watch an electron moving around inside an atom, distinguishing motion over periods as brief as 100 attoseconds.

  
  

  As an attosecond is a thousand million billionth of a second.

  
  

   

  • 9:02 pm
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